Joanne Kathleen Rowlingwas born in Chipping Sodbury General Hospital in Chipping Sodbury,
England on July 31, 1965. at 2 am. It is near BRISTOL. Her father, Peter,
was an engineer and her mother, Anne, who was half-Irish and half-Scottish,
was a homemaker who stayed at home to care for her and her younger sister
Di, who arrived two years after Jo.

At the age of four, she and her family moved to Winterbourne, in the
outskirts of Bristol. She enjoyed school very much and liked playing with
neighborhood kids, two of whom were named "Potter." In Jo's own words:
"I always liked their name, whereas I wasn't very fond of my own... Anyway,
the brother has since cropped up in the press claiming to 'be' Harry. His
mother has also told reporters that he and I used to dress up as wizards.
Neither of these claims is true; in fact, all I remember of the boy in
question was that he rode a 'Chopper', which was the bicycle everybody
wanted in the seventies, and once threw a stone at Di, for which I hit
him hard over the head with a plastic sword (I was the only one allowed
to throw things at Di)."

Jo wrote her first story at the age of five. Her story was entitled
"Rabbit" and included many different and interesting characters, such as
a large bee named Miss Bee. Her parents always nurtured her interest in
writing.

Because her parents had always dreamt of living in the country, the
family moved one last time to Tutshill, when Jo was nine years old. The
move occurred almost exactly at the time that her favorite grandmother,
Kathleen, passed away. She later took that name as an initial.

She attended Wyedean Secondary School when she turned eleven. There
she met Sean Harris, to whom Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is
dedicated to and who owned the original blue Ford Anglia.

At the age of 15, tragedy struck Jo. Her mother was diagnosed with multiple
sclerosis, which is a disease that affects the central nervous system.
Her condition slowly worsened with time.

In 1983, she left to study at the University of Exeter on the south
coast of England. Her parents encouraged her to study French, which she
did, but after graduation, she realized that that was a mistake.

Post-graduation, she worked in London with an organization called Amnesty
International, which campaigned against human rights abuse all over the
world.

In 1990, she and her boyfriend decided to move to Manchester together.
After a weekend of house hunting, while traveling back to London, the idea
of Harry Potter popped into mind. She began writing Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone that evening.

She moved up to Manchester and on December 30, 1990, she received tragic
news - her mother had died. Desperate to get away, Joanne moved to Portugal
and took the position of an English teacher in a language institute. While
in Portugal, she fell in love and married a Portuguese journalist named
Jorge Arantes. Her daughter, Jessica, was born in 1993. S(hortly after
the birth of her child, the marriage ended in divorce and she moved to
Edinburgh, Scotland to be near her sister.

Determined to finish her book, she wrote with a sudden frenzy.
(Contrary to popular belief, however, she was not forced to write on napkins,
as she had an ample supply of paper during the writing period.) Finally,
the book was finished. She sent the manuscript of the newly written story
to an agent, who returned it immediately. Another agent she sent it
to, however, was interested.

It took a year to find a publisher, but finally Bloomsbury Children's
Books agreed to publish it. A few months later, Arthur A. Levine
Books/Scholastic Press bought the American rights to the first Harry
Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, but changed the
title to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in an attempt to appeal
to a wider American audience. She received enough money to give up teaching
and write full time. (So did these publishers, so if you have books to
sell, approach THEM!).

When Bloomsbury Children's Books published the book in June of 1997,
it became an instant hit. It won the British Book Awards Children's Book
of the Year and Smarties Prize the same year. In September of 1998, Arthur
A. Levine Books/Scholastic Press published the book in the U.S. which was
renamed, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

She immediately started working on a sequel, which she eventually named
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (one of its former names was Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). It was published in July of 1998 in
Britain and June of 1999 in the United States. She promised another five
books in the series, making the total seven.

J.K. Rowling became a household name when the first three installments
of Harry Potter took the top three slots on the New York Bestsellers List.
The books achieved similar success in the U.K. as well.

Soon after the release of the first book, Warner Bros. bought the rights
to transform the books into films. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
brought in over $90 million dollars during its opening weekend, and each
of the following films has been wildly successful, as evidenced by Goblet
of Fire's massive $102 million opening weekend in November 2005.

By the summer of 2001, Jo had reportedly earned over $400 million for
her first three Harry Potter novels. The books had been translated into
35 different languages and had sold 30 million copies. Her fourth book,
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, pre-sold one million advanced copies.

In December of 2001, J.K. privately wed Dr. Neil Murray, and the couple's
first child, a boy, was born in March 2003, three months before the release
of the much anticipated Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Her
third child, Mackenzie, was born on January 23, 2005. Rowling wrote on
her website two days later that Mackenzie was "ridiculously beautiful."
Rowling's fortune is currently estimated to be over a billion dollars.
She is on the Forbes "100 Most Powerful Women" list and is #6 on the 2004
Forbes Celebrity Power List.

She frequently donates signed Harry Potter books and large sums of money
to charitable organizations, namely multiple sclerosis charities.
She uses her influential powers to aid those who are in need of help, such
as mentally disabled children whose treatment consisted of confinement
in cages in hospitals in the Czech Republic. (A simple letter to the
president of that country fixed the problem immediately.)

What started with the idea of a small, dark-haired boy with glasses
and a lightning-shaped scar has become one of the most recognized names
in the world. J.K. Rowling will always be remembered for introducing us
to a wizard named Harry Potter. But what is interesting about the woman
is her intuitive sense of the occult universe. Every single charm, enchantment,
danger, gift, mythological symbol that she uses is dead on.

For instance, Rowlings has four houses in her Hogwarts school:
Gryffindor,
Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. They actually correspond to the
fixed signs Leo (Gryffindor colors of fire--
red and gold); Taurus (Hufflepuff
colors of earth-- black and yellow);
Aquarius
(Ravenclaw colors of air-- blue and bronze);
and Slytherin Scorpio (water colors-- greenand silver). Is that amazing? Does
she know astrology? Or is she a channel of wisdom?
TRY BOTH!

Rowlings is a Leo native, born on Harry's birthday of July 31. She
is a proud fixed sign
member, knowing that the sign qualities are in square to each other.
For example, all
the fixed signs are 90 degrees from each other and form a square within
the zodiac. So
do the cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn), and the
mutable signs
(Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces).

She has another fixed sign, SCORPIO rising but the woman is definitely
NOT a Slytherin! Just because she was born with the sign of the occult,
dark unknown dangers..i.e. Scorpio doesn't make her part of the villainous
bunch over at that Hogwarts House. No, her ruler PLUTO is in VIRGO, the
virgin, hard working, pure, a solver of problems, even a healer. Pluto
was in the infamous
MAD MAX CONFIGURATION that was the hallmark of the 60's.
Uranus Pluto conjunct in VIRGO and opposed Saturn in Virgo.

Rowlings gave Ron's birthday as being in early March, making him a Pisces.
I
think Hermione's birthday is in April, thus she is either an Aries
or a Taurus (odds on
the bossy Aries, could be the stubborn Taurus).

Anyway, that's Rowlings very accurate justification for her Hogwarts
houses-- they are all
derived from the fixed signs of the zodiac. Doesn't Luna Lovegood make
a great zany airy
Ravenclaw Aquarian?

If you want to write Miss Rowling, personally, her Mailing Address is
c/o Bloomsbury Publishing
38 Soho Square London W1V 5DF - UK - She'd probably would REALLY LOVE
to hear what ideas you have for future Harry books or what about a departure
into fairy tales with the English Historical periods of greatest
interest, i.e. dark ages, medieval, etc, Suggest what other types of heros
and heroines she might cover in novels, what kinds of charities she could
open that would solve world problems, with the spare change in her purse,
any medieval English cooking tips, and as her writing has totally
stopped the world trend of kids not reading, suggest you want to give her
some kind of OSCAR for true greatness and encourage her not to stop on
this chore of SUPPLYING children with books, and being a PLUTO IN VIRGO,
servant of the masses' needs she will do so creating a world of Literacy!
signed, writers of this article, Patricia
Starteller and Anita Sands!